Everything Was a Lie
by Cyokie Revott
Summary: Oz Vessalius should never have been born. His father said it, sure, but never in all his years did he think he'd grow to believe it. Or maybe he'd believed it from the beginning. Because he couldn't imagine a time when the tears would stop flowing, or when the pain would fade away. All that was left was darkness now.
WARNING! Although I'm sure you guys can probably handle it, this fic is heavier than a lot of the other fics I've written. It's heavily based off of Oz's severe depression and suicidal feelings. In fact, that's what the fic is about. If you think you can deal with it, read it, but I had to put this warning here just in case. Although I'm sure you'll be fine, if you get really upset by this fic, it is not my concern from now on if you read it. Read at your own risk.

 **...**

How long had he been pretending?

Perhaps it began the day his father spoke those cursed words, or the day he was dragged into the Abyss for a sin he didn't know he committed. Maybe it started the first time one of his closest friends died—Elliot.

But it was impossible to tell where it started, because something with no end didn't really start anywhere, did it? It couldn't. Whether it was the boy's father telling him he should never have been born or even himself telling him he should never have been born, this void of darkness had been eating him up for what seemed like an eternity.

And what was happiness? He could barely tell anymore. He couldn't remember the last time he felt that emotion, because the word felt foreign on his tongue and he could no longer recall what the definition of it was. He had always been convinced he wasn't good enough—he was just a burden, after all, a worthless obstacle standing in everyone's way that was just _waiting_ to be destroyed.

Oz Vessalius.

The boy's own name rang in his head like an alarm, as if it was a curse in itself, something that should never be spoken aloud, or even thought of. And he found himself questioning what those words, that _name,_ meant, because he no longer knew who he was.

Had he felt this way before? He couldn't tell and he couldn't understand, because by now, everything blurred and nothing made sense. Every time he finally got a secure idea in mind, it turned out to be a lie. So why try anymore? Why not give up and lie down? Why not stop breathing and close your eyes and just let everything and everyone slip from your grasp? You never had them anyway. You never deserved them anyway.

The boy—Oz Vessalius—had plastered an endless smile to his face. It was the embodiment of joy and happiness and careless youth that seemed to make the world glow. And that silly, optimistic, sadistically humorous, girl-loving personality was one that nobody could forget.

But what hope did the world have if this same teenage boy who possessed these brilliant qualities might as well have been the embodiment of pain? No one could see it. He'd made sure no one could see it. Burdens are supposed to be seen as burdens. Nobody is supposed to know whether the burden enjoys its life or not, whether it means to stand in their way. It's just there, and they need to get rid of it. It needs to be disposed of. He needed to be disposed of.

Fake smiles and laughs, they all seemed so familiar by now. And people always said it was painful to live your life on lies, but how after a while, the lie you're telling yourself becomes the truth. It doesn't matter if it's an illusion—if it was always an illusion. Eventually, you'll start convincing _yourself_ you're happy and beautiful and endlessly amazing. You'll start convincing yourself you are who you wished you were.

He had been doing this for so long he could barely tell what was real and what wasn't anymore. When he was smiling and laughing and joking, being the pure, ridiculous boy everyone wanted him to be, sometimes he actually believed it. Sometimes he believed the act. And everyone always said that pain was the worst thing in the world, but was that worse than not knowing if you were in pain in the first place?

The others tried to help the boy, but they didn't understand him. They didn't understand that he didn't want help; he just wanted to _die_ —to die and get this all over with…to finally be able to give in. Once upon a time, there was a happy young child who saw beauty in all life while the sun glowed in his eyes and the angels rested in his smile.

Then the child grew up, and those angels faded away and the sun dimmed. But the smile and the eyes remained. It made no difference to the people who didn't really know the boy. They couldn't tell. They still thought he was the most gorgeous thing in the world. They didn't know that the sun had been clouded over permanently. They didn't know that the angels had been beaten and devoured by the demons.

Giving up sounded like the most beautiful option right then—to drive a knife through his chest and pull it out, seeing his own blood staining the blade. Then he'd finally know he'd served his purpose—to disappear. Because in all the lies his father had told, he'd come to believe the one that had hurt him the most. He should never have been born.

And he shouldn't have, really. He was a lifeless doll brought to life for stupid reasons that was then turned into a weapon of death—and then sold off as an innocent human boy. If he had never been born, so many things would have been saved. So many things wouldn't have fallen into disarray.

He was terrified, though. He was terrified because he was the only one who could see himself for what he really was—a beast and a sickness. If everyone else could see that, they'd want him gone.

They'd want him gone, just like he wanted himself gone.

The words, the glances, the feelings, the promises, the soft grabs, the _love_ —it never meant anything. All those things were illusions. All those things were things he thought he had that he never did. Because he was never really living, was he? If he was a mistake and wasn't supposed to have been born, he wasn't really living. He was always meant to be dead. So he was always dead.

And the fantasy of life, the fantasy of joy, they were things made for everyone but him. He had never deserved them; if he didn't deserve death or misery, how could he deserve life or joy? Why couldn't they see that death was his ultimate liberation—his salvation?

The dreams of suicide and pain were infinitely better than the dreams of happiness, because the boy _knew_ he'd never be able to obtain happiness. It was something that was long out of his reach. So the dreams weren't tastes of what he could have, but rather mockery of what he couldn't have, aches and pains that didn't do anything other than black out his heart more—if that was possible.

There were too many lies to list. The boy _himself_ was a lie, it seemed. And everything in the boy's life was a lie. He had never loved anyone, never deserved anything, and never lived…he had always been a hopeless case pretending to have a chance.

So why was life worth living? All he was doing was putting other people in pain without trying. Whenever he tried to do something right, it always went wrong. He was a mistake, an oddity, something that should have jumped off a cliff or sipped the poison or stabbed himself long ago. And there was no such thing as dying too early for him—only too late.

He hated the sun. He hated the flowers. He hated the song of the birds. He hated all beauty. And this was because every time something had seemed beautiful in his life, it had always crumbled to pieces and revealed it was always a lie. He felt as though everywhere he looked there was beauty. And that was awful, because then he felt as though he could point at anything and accurately say, _that's a lie. It never existed. It was never part of my life. I was always the thing that made everything ugly._

And Gilbert, Alice, the rest of them, they all said they didn't want him to leave them. They were always trying to help him. But they didn't understand that this was hopeless. He would never listen, because he believed, he _knew_ he would be doing them a favor by dying. He was always in their way anyway. They'd be better off if he was gone. The _world_ would be better off if he was gone.

And _this,_ this permanent eclipse of the boy's heart, was like the natural disaster or world war you never expected to happen, much less affect _you._ But it had hit him hard. All he could recall by now were the tears and the agony and the _death._ It had made him realize he should have killed himself from the very beginning.

In fact, he found himself wondering why he hadn't done it already.


End file.
